But four decades ago, when the first Happy Meal debuted, the company didn't quite get it. They didn't immediately embrace it," Bob Bernstein, an advertising executive who created the Happy Meal in the late 1970s, said in a video interview from his Kansas City office, which is decked out with Happy Meal memorabilia and original art. Bernstein, whose ad agency ran marketing for McDonald's in several cities, had been working with McDonald's for a decade before the Happy Meal debuted. "It's such a happy place / Hap, hap, hap, happy place," it went. In the 1990s, Beanie Babies, Transformers and Power Rangers Happy Meal toys were massive hits for McDonald's.

Source: CNN December 04, 2022 16:04 UTC